Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Turbine's unannounced MMO?

I've been seeing mumblings online that Turbine, Inc. the developer of Asheron's Call, Dungeon and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online has been secretly working on a yet unannounced MMO.

While there is no information on what the MMO will be about, a few things have surfaced.

In Jan. '09 there was a job listing on the Turbine site for a micro-transaction and e-commerce manager. When the community of their current MMO's started to balk at the idea that micro-transactions would be used in their current MMO's, Sapience, a LOTRO community manager, replied;

"We know the recent job listing has caused a bit of a stir, but please be aware that this posting is for an unannounced future project."

Source: ShackNews

Odds are this MMO will be developed for the console market. According to an interview with Adam Mersky, Director of Communcations at Turbine, from Aug. '08;

"We’re looking at creating, hopefully, the first MMO that really works. Right now we’re looking at if for the 360 and the PS3…We’re not going to rush to be first so-to-speak, but clearly we’re leading the way. We’ll ship something when it’s ready, and when it’s something that’s going to work on the platform. Clearly there are a lot of hurdles. We’ve been working for awhile, plowing through the majority of them, and we’ve got a lot of work still to do."

Source: Destructoid

Could Turbine be bringing one of their existing MMO's to the console or are they starting something totally new? Could we see an Asheron's Call or LOTRO on the 360 or PS3? I'll keep an eye out for future information on this project.

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